Values in Sustainable Development

by Appleton; Jack

• ISBN13: 9780415643504
• ISBN10: 0415643503
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2013-10-21
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Too often the role of values is neglected in sustainable development research and practitioner projects. This book introduces and compares worldviews and values from multiple countries and perspectives, and provides a survey of empirical methods available to study environmental values as affected by sustainable development. The book moves beyond the discussion of values primarily in economic terms to look at these in the cultural and social psychological sense, to better understand values of participants and a sense of values held by individuals not just within the ecological movement, but across the world. The first part of the book is methodological, looking at what values are, why they are important, and how to include values in sustainable development. It presents a variety of approaches to understand and elicit values from stakeholders in sustainable development decisions. The second part looks at how values differ across social contexts, religions and viewpoints demonstrating how various individuals may value nature from a variety of cultural, social, and religious points of view. The third part presents case studies ordered by scale from the individual and community levels through to the national, regional and international levels. These examples show how values can motivate, be incorporated into projects and be an integral part of the success of the projects. This thought-provoking book gives researchers, students and practitioners in sustainable development a wealth of approaches to include values in their research and professional work.